Friday, April 29, 2005

More than half of Kyrgyzstan's married women were snatched from the street by their husbands in a custom known as "ala kachuu," which translates roughly as "grab and run." In its most benign form, it is a kind of elopement, in which a man whisks away a willing girlfriend. But often it is something more violent.

Recent surveys suggest that the rate of abductions has steadily grown in the last 50 years and that at least a third of Kyrgyzstan's brides are now taken against their will. ...

Kyrgyz men say they snatch women because it is easier than courtship and cheaper than paying the standard "bride price," which can be as much as $800 plus a cow. ...

Many women fight fiercely, but about 80 percent of those kidnapped eventually relent, often at the urging of their own parents. ...

Brutal as the custom is, it is widely perceived as practical. "Every good marriage begins in tears," a Kyrgyz saying goes. ...

"I was angry and I felt betrayed," Ms. Tairova said, adding that she had cried the whole day.

But as with many Kyrgyz women, she eventually accepted her fate. She since has reconciled with her in-laws and says she is happy with her husband now.

"He says he had to kidnap me because he heard someone else was trying to kidnap me first," she said. "He's a good man."

LONDON [AP] — The most convincing research so far suggests that being fat in your 40s might raise your risk of developing dementia later in life.

In a study that followed more than 10,000 Californians for almost 30 years, researchers found that the fatter people were, the greater their risk for Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia. The results were published online today by the British Medical Journal. ...

The data showed that roughly seven out of 100 normal-weight people developed dementia. Among overweight people, the risk was almost eight out of 100; and for obese people, it was nine out of 100.

I am surprised that they are so quick to say that the obesity causes the dementia; I think that it is more likely that the dementia causes the obesity. In most cases, obesity is a symptom of a malfunctioning brain.

A letter to Dear Abby describes a woman with paranoid delusions about intruders in the house. She gets her 11-year-old daughter paranoid as well, and nags her husband to death about it. Her husband tries to make light of the situation, or deflect the blame. Dear Abby advises:

DEAR COWARDLY: Your husband's behavior is cruel and unwise. He's encouraging your daughter's fears as a way of punishing you for your forgetfulness. If it continues, your daughter will have phobias that could last a lifetime; it's mental cruelty.

I'm not sure who is nuttier -- Dear Abby or the letter writer. If my wife announced that she heard a strange noise and that there must be an intruder in the house, I might take her seriously the first five times or so. I would eventually decide that my wife suffers from paranoid delusions.

A repo man takes a pick-up truck and kidnaps a sleeping child, while the parents had stopped at a gas station. So what happens?The child is recovered safely and the father has been charged with child ndangerment! The repo man was not charged.

Is there some law against letting your child sleep in a vehicle if you are behind on your loan payments? Why charge the dad and not the mom? Is that because the dad is being blamed for missing the payment? These cases should not be criminalized.

The changes are proving lethal. More than 50 percent of Mexican women have body-mass indexes of 25 or more, an indicator of being overweight, Bourges said. The obesity rate here is the same as in the United States, he added.

In the Mexican countryside, for example, insects are a common source of protein. At a dinner at the famed restaurant Izote, run by chef and author Patricia Quintana, conference participants from the U.S. sampled fried maguey worms, which look a bit like ruffled french fries, and ant eggs, or escamole, which resemble barley. ...

"To anybody who pays taxes in the States," Gifford said, "the consequences of the health problems of urbanized Latinos to the American taxpayers is just going to be punishing."

So Mexicans don't want to eat bugs and worms anymore, and America is to blame.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

For most of the history of this country, differences between the black and the white population--whether in income, IQ, crime rates, or whatever--have been attributed to either race or racism. For much of the first half of the 20th century, these differences were attributed to race--that is, to an assumption that blacks just did not have it in their genes to do as well as white people. The tide began to turn in the second half of the 20th century, when the assumption developed that black-white differences were due to racism on the part of whites.

Three decades of my own research lead me to believe that neither of those explanations will stand up under scrutiny of the facts. As one small example, a study published last year indicated that most of the black alumni of Harvard were from either the West Indies or Africa, or were the children of West Indian or African immigrants. These people are the same race as American blacks, who greatly outnumber either or both. ...

What then could explain such large disparities in demographic "representation" among these three groups of blacks? Perhaps they have different patterns of behavior and different cultures and values behind their behavior. ...

Disparities between Southern whites and Northern whites extended across the board from rates of violence to rates of illegitimacy. American writers from both the antebellum South and the North commented on the great differences between the white people in the two regions. So did famed French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville.

None of these disparities can be attributed to either race or racism. Many contemporary observers attributed these differences to the existence of slavery in the South, as many in later times would likewise attribute both the difference between Northern and Southern whites, and between blacks and whites nationwide, to slavery. But slavery doesn't stand up under scrutiny of historical facts any better than race or racism as explanations of North-South differences or black-white differences.

I think that it is amazing that Harvard can give an assortment of lofty justifications for affirmative action, and then fill its black admissions quota with students from Africa and the West Indies.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- It's being called potty parity. The nine-campus Los Angeles Community College District has pledged to add more women's bathroom stalls across its campuses as part of a $2.2 billion construction program. The move calls for four bathroom stalls for every 50 women and one for every 50 men. That compares with state ratios of three for every 50 women and one for every 100 men.

No, it is not potty parity. It is discrimination in favor of girls, by a factor of 4. Where is Title IX enforcement?

In 1969, 4 million men and 2.9 million women were enrolled as undergraduates at colleges and universities across the country. By 2000, the number of male undergrads had risen 39 percent, to 5.6 million, but the number of female undergrads had leaped upward 157 percent, to 7.4 million. ...

There are 130,000 more women than men at public and private colleges in the region today, according to the New England Board of Higher Education, which addresses the issue in the April edition of its magazine The Connection.

The University of Maine System, which enrolls 74 percent of the state's public higher education students, has 21,480 women compared with 12,773 men. For the past 10 years at least, enrollment for women has exceeded that of men at all seven campuses. ...

Maine leads the nation in the low rate of men in higher education, according to a 2003 report by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. The report indicated there were 154 women in college in Maine per 100 men, just below Delaware which had the next lowest rate with 151 women per 100 men. Utah, with 100 men for every 98 women, had the highest rate of college-going males to females.

Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbani­zation, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power.

Reversals of this sort have occurred before. Wildfire went from universal menace in mid-20th century to honored natural force and forestry tool now, from “Only you can prevent forest fires!” to let-burn policies and prescribed fires for understory management.

I don't see environmentalists responding to scientific facts so readily.

Despite dire predictions that the streets would be awash in military-style guns, the expiration of the decade-long assault weapons ban last September has not set off a sustained surge in the weapons' sales, gun makers and sellers say. It also has not caused any noticeable increase in gun crime in the past seven months, according to several metropolitan police departments.

The uneventful expiration of the assault weapons ban did not surprise gun owners, nor did it surprise some advocates of gun control.

The assault weapon ban was never really intended to have any significant effect on gun possession or crime. The anti-gun folks just wanted to pick out some guns that looked bad, and then make a symbolic political statement by banning them.

Friday, April 22, 2005

Some of the things which I thought especially interesting were the results which showed that younger people (18-29) support a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage by a 56/39 margin (so much for the concept that gay marriage proponents just have to wait until the younger generation grows up), while the demographic with the least support for an amendment is people 50-64 (ie, the cream of the Baby Boomer generation), who only support such an amendment by a 51/45 margin.

Thursday, April 21, 2005

(Columbia) April 20, 2005 - The State House took up two pieces of legislation this week aimed at protecting two different groups. Up for debate was cracking down on gamecock fighting and protecting victims of domestic violence.

A bill protecting cocks passed through the House Judiciary Committee. Rep. John Graham Altman (R-Dist. 119-Charleston) was in favor of the gamecock bill, "I was all for that. Cockfighting reminds me of the Roman circus, coliseum."

A bill advocates say would protect victims against batterers was tabled, killing it for the year. Rep. Altman is on the committee that looked at the domestic violence bill, "I think this bill is probably drafted out of an abundance of ignorance."

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

People who are overweight but not obese have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight, federal researchers are reporting today.

The researchers - statisticians and epidemiologists from the National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - also found that increased risk of death from obesity was seen for the most part in the extremely obese, a group constituting only 8 percent of Americans.

And being very thin, even though the thinness was longstanding and unlikely to stem from disease, caused a slight increase in the risk of death, the researchers said.

My BMI is 27. I think that my weight is ideal. Apparently people with my BMI live the longest. They need to adjust the BMI tables.

This is being reported as saying that overweight people live longer. My point is that athletic people have extra muscle mass, and get falsely classified as being overweight because the BMI tables do not distinguish between muscle and fat. Perhaps the conclusion should have been that athletic people live longer.

This NY Times story says that stories about 50% divorce rates are exaggerated:

About 60 percent of all marriages that eventually end in divorce do so within the first 10 years, researchers say. If that continues to hold true, the divorce rate for college graduates who married between 1990 and 1994 would end up at only about 25 percent, compared to well over 50 percent for those without a four-year college degree.

It says that the overall divorce rate never reached 50%, and maybe it never will, in spite of common predictions. The article ends with this lame excuse:

Joshua R. Goldstein, associate professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton's Office of Population Research, said the loss of detailed government data, coming at a time when divorce rates were at their highest, might have distorted not only public perception, but people's behavior.

"Expectations of high divorce are in some ways self-fulfilling," he said. "That's a partial explanation for why rates went up in the 1970's."

As word gets out that rates have tempered or actually begun to fall, Dr. Goldstein added, "It could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy in the other direction."

So this guy thinks that 1000s of couples got divorced because they thought that they were following a trend, and if they only knew that they were following the wrong trend, they would have stayed married. No wonder these folks are producing faulty statistics.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of couples go into counseling in an effort to save their troubled relationships.

But does marital therapy work? Not nearly as well as it should, researchers say. Two years after ending counseling, studies find, 25 percent of couples are worse off than they were when they started, and after four years, up to 38 percent are divorced.

... experts say many therapists lack the skills to work with couples who are in serious trouble.

I guess that the therapists blame all the failures on the other therapists who supposedly lack skills.

I wonder what percentage of couples are actually damaged by the therapy. Some couples see a therapist, get bad advice, act on the bad advice, and end up much worse off.

There’s also a fourth possible view on the relations between sex and success—one that no one has systematically articulated to date. If those who assert biological differences between the sexes disagree about whether we can overcome them, the same might apply to those who assert the power of cultural differences. Even if we do provisionally hold that virtually all differences between men and women are cultural, might it not also be true that those differences are impossible to overcome? If so, it wouldn’t be “gender” but the feminist effort to eliminate it that is truly oppressive. This fourth view suggests that the very same cultural forces that make feminists desire androgyny may actually prevent us from achieving it. The cultural sources of “gender” difference, properly understood, would then inform us not that our gender identities are infinitely malleable but that they’re effectively impossible to change. ...

Chodorow hypothesizes that the differences between the sexes simply derive from the contingent circumstance that women happen to be the primary caretakers of children. The special, “feminine” empathy required for rearing children, she suggests, becomes indelibly associated in our minds with people who just physically happen to be female. ...

There are some interesting ideas here, but most of them don't hold water.

What's with all the posthumous adulation of loony feminist extraordinaire Andrea Dworkin? ...

Whatever her defenders may say, Dworkin was a relentless preacher of hatred toward men ...

Whatever her defenders say, Dworkin was anti-sex. No, she may not have ever written the actual words "All sex is rape" or "All sexual intercourse is rape." But she did extensively argue, in particular in the 1987 book, Intercourse, that (1) all heterosexual sex in our "patriarchal" society is coercive and degrading to women, and (2) sexual penetration may by its very nature doom women to inferiority and submission, and "may be immune to reform." A chapter from the book, filled with such insights as, "Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women," can be found here.

The research involved 488 runners in the 2002 marathon. The runners gave blood samples before and after the race. While most were fine, 13 percent of them - or 62 - drank so much that they had hyponatremia, or abnormally low blood sodium levels. Three had levels so low that they were in danger of dying.

When I was a kid, athletes were commonly given salt pills during water breaks. The article fails to suggest or even mention this obvious remedy.

We've had many years of propaganda that salt is somehow unhealthy or harmful. Salt is a health issue for a small number of people on high blood pressure medication, but the vast majority of people can eat all the salt they want with no known ill effects.

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

It is funny how a bunch of junk science lawyers and feminists have been keeping silicone breast implants off the market. Their position seems to be that the implants are okay if the woman has a good reason (like reconstruction) but not otherwise. The anti-silicone feminists probably all call themselves "pro-choice", but they don't want women to be able to make their own choices about their breasts.

My nephew, a freshman in college, attended a meeting in his dorm in which everyone introduced themselves and shared some personal information to get acquainted. My nephew introduced himself and mentioned that he has two moms. An Induhvidual looked at him and said, in all seriousness, “So… does this mean that one of them is a lesbian?”

It sounds ridiculous, but the nephew does not have "two moms". He has one mom, and that mom is probably not even really a lesbian. She was probably married to his dad who turned into a man-hating feminist.

Florida's lawmakers have passed a bill to remove criminal penalties for anyone who shoots an attacker even if the shooter didn't first make an effort to escape.

The "Stand Your Ground" bill, which is expected to be signed by Gov. Jeb Bush, removes the "retreat if it is prudent" clause from state law, thus giving citizens the right to use deadly force - even when it may not be needed.

For a long time, gun control advocates claimed that there was a consensus among legal experts that the Second Amendment does not describe an individual right to possess guns.

In reality, the vast majority of legal experts agree that the 2A does describe an individual right. It is so hard to find another view that the Joyce Foundation had to bribe law professors and censor those with accurate views. Here is the Bogus explanation:

We felt that, for a variety of reasons, the collective rights model was under represented in the debate, and wanted to give scholars an opportunity to enhance or further illuminate the collective rights position. Sometimes a more balanced debate is best served by an unbalanced symposium. I did not, therefore, invite anyone who I knew subscribed to the individual rights model.

Monday, April 11, 2005

Fourteen percent of the world's cell phone users report that they have stopped in the middle of a sex act to answer a ringing wireless device, Ad Age reported. The highest incidence of cellular interruptus was found in Germany and Spain, where 22 percent of users interrupted sex to answer their cell phones; the lowest was in Italy, where only 7 percent reported doing so.

At least you know where you stand if your lover prefers a cell phone call.

The Powerline blog has the story about the Terri Schiavo memo. The Wash Post reported:

Republican officials declared, in a memo that was supposed to be seen only by senators, that they believe the Schiavo case "is a great political issue" that could pay dividends with Christian conservatives, whose support is essential in midterm elections such as those coming up in 2006.

A one-page memo, distributed to Republican senators by party leaders, said the debate over Schiavo would appeal to the party's base, or core, supporters. The memo singled out Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who is up for reelection next year and is potentially vulnerable in a state President Bush won last year.

We now know that story is mostly a hoax, apparently perpetrated by Democratic Senator Tom Harkin or his staff. Republican officials did not declare anything, or send any memo to any Republican senators. There was a pro-Schiavo memo that was written by a Republican staffer that said:

This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue.

This is a great political issue, because Senator Nelson of Florida has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats.

These were routine talking points. The pro-lifers do believe that there should be an honest and open debate about life-and-death issues, and indeed excited about the Schiavo case drawing attention to issues of importance to them.

Saturday, April 09, 2005

Polls leading up to the death of Terri Schiavo made it appear Americans had formed a consensus in favor of ending her life. However, a new Zogby poll with fairer questions shows the nation clearly supporting Terri and her parents and wanting to protect the lives of other disabled patients.

Malkin has more. 80% say that a disabled person should not be denied food and water. Another poll said that 75% thought that the government should stay out, and so they all presumably think that the government judge should never have issued the starvation order.

The Zogby poll still doesn't get to the heart of the matter. There is a reason why this case is controversial, and the polls don't really address it.

Friday, April 08, 2005

LAS VEGAS – The woman who claims she bit into a human finger while eating chili at a Wendy's restaurant has a history of filing lawsuits – including a claim against another fast-food restaurant in Nevada.

Anna Ayala, who hired a San Jose, Calif., attorney to represent her in the Wendy's case, has been involved in at least half a dozen legal battles in the San Francisco Bay area, according to more than a decade of court records.

They include the suit she brought against an ex-boss in 1998, seeking $500,000 for sexual harassment, and the 2000 case she filed against an auto dealership alleging the wheel fell off her car. That suit was dismissed after Ayala fired her lawyer, who said she had threatened him.

I am suspicious about whether this woman really got a finger in her chili. Food companies get a lot of bogus lawsuits from people like this woman.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Here are the Pulitzer nominees for editorial cartoons. See a pattern? They are all left-wing. Here are the photo nominees. Same story. No, I don't believe that only leftists are smart enough to draw cartoons or use cameras.

Conventional wisdom says that those with marital problems are better off seeing some sort of marriage counselor or psychotherapist. The empirical evidence is rather weak, and I wouldn't be surprised if such therapy usually does more harm than good. Here is an essay on How therapy can be hazardous to your marital health.

Now I’m going to talk about the most common ways that therapists undermine marital commitment. And I want to underline again: I do this for a living. I train therapists, and I think that therapy can be enormously helpful in the right hands. There are four ways that therapists undermine marital commitment: incompetent therapists, neutral therapists, pathologizing therapists, and overtly undermining therapists.

And this is coming from a psychotherapist. He's may be doing harm also, and he may not realize it.

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

As a Nigerian psychiatrist and public-health physician who has worked with Nigerian women, I know that African men will not use condoms, not with prostitutes or girlfriends and definitely not with their wives - who, they believe, are their property.

An average African woman cannot say no to her husband: the consequences are a thorough beating or divorce, and most African women cannot afford divorce. Unlike their Western sisters, they would not be given child support. And with no social welfare services to assist them in caring for their children, they would become destitute. At the same time, their culture would blame them for not holding on to their husbands.

There is probably an army of Western do-gooders trying to convince the African women to say no to their husbands and walk out of their marriages, and to change the culture so that women will be held blameless.

Like many Japanese women, Junko waited until her early 30s to get married. When she and her fiance, an employee of a well-known firm, decided to tie the knot, she set her sights on making a home, putting away some money and starting a family.

Fifteen years later, Junko and her husband are childless. It is not that they cannot have children; it is just that they have never had sex.

The sexless marriage is one of several reasons why experts fear Japan is on the verge of a demographic disaster. ...

The 200 women a year who seek help at a clinic in the Tokyo suburbs have not had sex with their husbands in up to 20 years, and some never, according to Kim Myong-gan, who runs the clinic. ...

A survey of 600 women found that 26% had not had sex with their husbands in the past year. ...

"The men love their companies; they live for work," Mr Kim said. "Men don't even think it is a problem if they don't have sex with their wives. They have pornography and the sex industry to take care of their needs, but their wives have nowhere to go. They just suffer in silence."

My mom says, "the American woman is the most fortunate creature to ever walk the face of the earth."

Marty Nemko has some good essays on men's issues and other subjects. I just heard him on the radio, and some women callers were enraged when he told the truth about sex discrimination. A lot of women cling to persecution myths that just are not justified by the statistics.

Even laboratory rats have been shown to chirp delightedly above the range of human hearing when wrestling with each other or being tickled by a keeper -- the same vocalizations they make before receiving morphine or having sex. ...

``Tickles are the key,'' he said. ``They open up a previously hidden world.''

Panksepp had studied play vocalizations in animals for years before it occurred to him that they might be an ancestral form of laughter.

``Then I went to the lab and tickled some rats. Tickled them gently around the nape of their necks. Wow!''

The tickling made the rats chirp happily -- ``as long as the animal's friendly toward you,'' he said. ``If not, you won't get a single chirp, just like a child that might be suspicious of an adult.''

Rats that were repeatedly tickled became socially bonded to the researchers and would seek out tickles. The researchers also found that rats would rather spend time with animals that chirp a lot than with those that don't.

Yeah, I tried that with my wife. Maybe the rats are evolving to be more like women.